Selectmen vote to oust Milton town administrator

Friday

Jul 20, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 20, 2012 at 8:11 PM

At a closed-door session Wednesday night, Milton selectmen voted 2-1 not to renew Kevin Mearn’s contract as town administrator. Since he has been working without a contract since June 30, the action removed him from the job immediately.

Fred Hanson

Kevin Mearn isn’t planning to go quietly into retirement.

At a closed-door session Wednesday night, selectmen voted 2-1 not to renew Mearn’s contract as town administrator. Since he has been working without a contract since June 30, the action removed him from the job immediately.

“I feel this is a very unfortunate situation,” Mearn said in a telephone interview Thursday. “I believe I was wrongfully terminated from my position. I feel once the facts are made known, the community will realize what happened.”

Mearn, who grew up in Milton, has worked for the town for 39 years, starting as a laborer in the public works department. He was a police officer for 30 years, the last 15 as chief, and has been town administrator for a little more than five years.

Denis Keohane and Robert Sweeney, the two selectmen who voted to remove Mearn, cited the need to move in a different direction as well as differences between Mearn and Police Chief Richard Wells Jr.

“There was a communications breakdown somewhere along the line,” said Keohane, who was elected to the board in April. “To make it work, somebody has to go.”

Sweeney said his concerns about Mearn center on the town administrator’s conflicts with both the police chief and Milton’s council on aging.

The dispute with the council on aging is over whether health insurance benefits for an employee who is being paid with grant money should also be paid for with money from that grant.

Sweeney, who was elected to the board last year, said the vote on Mearn “was a difficult decision, but I think it was in the best interest of the town. We have a new board, and I think it’s in the best interest of the town to have a new administrator.”

Keohane said Mearn “doesn’t have the same vision I have to move the town forward. We tended to be on opposite ends of some issues.”

Selectmen Chairman Thomas Hurley cast the dissenting vote.

“Kevin has done a lot of good things for the town, negotiating all the contracts and negotiating the new health insurance plan that saved the town about $1 million a year,” Hurley said.

Hurley said there has been an ongoing dispute between Mearn and Wells concerning the police department’s administration.

“They haven’t seen eye-to-eye in quite a while,” Hurley said. “I don’t think he deserved not having his contract renewed. I think the thing between the chief and Kevin needed to be resolved, but that’s not the way to do it.”

Former Selectman John Shields said he and his two fellow selectmen at the time encouraged Mearn to apply for the administrator job.

“His loss is immeasurable, because he’s a talented individual,” Shields said. “Kevin was never a political guy. He always worked for the benefit of Milton.”

In April, the selectmen voted to approve the deployment of a second police dog. Wells had purchased the dog nearly a year earlier, and he had the animal and a trainer undergo three months of training without seeking the board’s approval.

Last year, selectmen retained former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct an independent review of four decisions made by Wells. Those decisions concerned payment of compensatory time to police officers, the disposal of a police SUV, and the acquisition and deployment of two boats by the police department.

Harshbarger concluded that Wells “should have been more proactive” in reporting to Mearn and selectmen. With the exception of negotiating an agreement with police unions on compensatory time without approval from selectmen or the town administrator, Wells did not knowingly violate any law, town rules, regulations or polices, Harshbarger found.

Wells believed he had the authority to act unilaterally on at least three of the matters. Mearn disagreed and told Harshbarger that the board did as well.

“It is entirely appropriate for the (selectmen) to expect the (town administrator) to be their gatekeeper in dealing with town agency heads, setting the agenda of the (selectmen) and generally serving as the executive and administrator in order to conserve their time and focus and establish priorities, and the chief must willingly accept that (town administrator) role,” Mearn wrote. “The bottom line is that more regular communication between the (selectmen), the (town administrator) and the chief could have clarified the facts and circumstances of each of the chief’s actions, expeditiously and contemporaneously and avoided much of the current speculation and potential controversy. In any event, the (board of selectmen) has a responsibility to resolve the process and authority issues directly with the chief. The matter is now ripe, and these four matters demonstrate the need.”

Assistant Town Administrator Annemarie Fagan will serve as acting town administrator.